Two Clowns Short of a Three Ring Circus
by Fandomatic
Summary: Sheppard faces his worst nightmare: "The clowns? Oh, yeah, the clowns. We fight them too - entire armies, spilling out of Volkswagens. We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending 'em in!" Season 2 — The Hive
1. Chapter 1

**_AN: _**_I've had this on my computer for years and a scene in _World War Z_ reminded me of this unfinished story. I'd thought I'd post it and see if there's enough interest out there for me to finish it.  
_

**Summery:** Sheppard faces his worst nightmare.

_The clowns? Oh, yeah, the clowns. We fight them too - entire armies, spilling out of Volkswagens. We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending 'em in!_

_Season 2 — The Hive_

**Genres: **General  
**Characters**: Sheppard/McKay  
**Rating:** T for violence**  
Setting:** Post Season Five_  
_**Disclaimer:** Contains recycled material.

•

**Two Clowns Short of a Three Ring Circus  
**by Fandomatic

•

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**Chapter One  
**

* * *

Dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt, John Sheppard paused expectantly, waiting for McKay to respond with more enthusiasm about the two football tickets in his hand. After saving Earth from a Wraith infestation, the Atlantis military commanding officer found himself in a unique position to cash in on earth's gratitude. With Atlantis docked on Earth and safely cloaked in San Francisco's harbor, he intended to catch up on leave time and enjoy some of the perks.

No, Dr. Rodney McKay wasn't paying attention to him again. He had that occupied look that said his brain was out to lunch, despite his repeated claims as _the_ authoritative multi-tasking master. He tucked the tickets away. There was one sure way to ramp up the attention span and get the ball rolling. All he had to do was reach out and fondle a few pretties.

"Didn't I say no touching? What part did you not under—"

"It's just a ball, Rodney." Sheppard innocently smiled and tossed the metallic ball back and forth between his hands and wondered if Rodney would make the connection and remember.

McKay briefly came up to give him a scathing look and divided his attention between his screen and the ball slapping between Sheppard's palms. "'Just a ball' doesn't come close to describing that indescribable, incredibly complicated, ancient technology that you seem to have to juggle every time you come into my lab. You know, you're like a little kid — you have to grab everything." He settled his nose into the screen again.

"You don't know what it does," Sheppard smiled knowingly. "It looks like that training droid, you know, Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber." He held it out and buzzed Rodney's space. "Only less prickly."

"Well, if you get zapped, don't say I didn't warn you." Rodney tried to ignore the invasion.

"You've had it for years and it's never," the ball swooped, "done," and dived across the screen, "anything."

Annoyed that his concentration was broken, McKay swiped at the ball hovering around his ears. "Stop clowning around! Anyway, it's broken. I already tried turning it on … _repeatedly_."

The ball hesitated in mid-flight in front of McKay's eyes, which grew bigger when the ball started humming and his head snapped around.

"Oh, no no no no no! Don't even think it, Colonel."

The colonel grimaced and straightened with all the play sucked out of him. He tried to reverse the thrumming that he could feel building in the device. "You said it's broken." Did his voice sound a little weak?

"You didn't!"

"I can't control what I think, Rodney!" Sheppard looked at the activated ball like it was a grenade. "'Don't think about pink elephants' means everyone's thinking about pink elephants! So when you say don't think about it, I can't help but think it! But this is a first because it's never done _that_ before!"

McKay scrambled out of his chair. "If you'd stop clowning around like a little kid all the time—"

"I wasn't…" Sheppard's jaw muscles jumped. "Okay, maybe a little clowning, but it won't turn off."

"Really? What'd you do? Here, give it—"

•

Sometime later, three men watched the two figures on the screen freeze and exchange shocked looks as the ball's light grew in intensity between their locked fingers. A high-pitched, oscillating whine rose in tandem with the light.

Radek Zelenka looked up from the monitor that had briefly filled with a white glare and subsided to an empty room.

On the screen, the ball in question briefly hovered, the glowing light abruptly died and the ball dropped to the Atlantis lab floor with a hollow thunk, bounced and rolled under the table.

Zelenka soberly picked up a computer tablet that had leads attached to a now secured ancient ball inside a very solid, ballistic glass box and turned to the Atlantis commander and Colonel Caldwell who were standing in the same spot McKay and Sheppard had occupied earlier.

"And that is when Rodney and Col. Sheppard's life forms and subcutaneous transmitters disappeared off our scanners."

Caldwell glowered at the jailed ball, as if to blame it for his troubles. "We launched a full military sweep and came up with nothing," he confirmed soberly. "Sheppard and McKay are not on Earth."

Richard Woolsey's wrinkles deepened in the somber moment as the three silently observed the dead ancient ball that stubbornly refused to give up its secrets. "Well, what did you find out about the ancient device?" he prodded Zelenka.

Radek pushed his glasses up. He was not sure he could provide the hope they wanted. "Not much because the device remains dormant, but it also lost about half of its mass. There is a good chance the beam transported them … somewhere else. Hopefully with controls." Zelenka blinked nervously into the growing silence and added unnecessarily, "Meanwhile, they are … poof!"

•

Sheppard and McKay rematerialized together in the same frozen pose with their fingers tangled around a much smaller version of the ancient ball. The lesser object slipped through their combined fingers and the artifact dropped toward the floor, where it also bounced with a solid sounding thud and rolled between their feet.

The noise was jarring, but the Wraith lab cluttered with Wraith tech was frightening.

"Oh, no," moaned McKay.

"Holy crap!" whispered Sheppard and felt his hair bristle as he groped for his non-existent sidearm. "And me without my panzer!"

"Oh, this is really, really, really, really, _really_ bad." McKay's head jerked from horrifying sight to equally horrifying sight, confirming what Sheppard already processed — they were completely surrounded within horrifying Wraith walls.

The chamber they found themselves in was roughly round in shape with several tables scattered around the perimeter. Walls, black and covered in a leathery coating tougher than rhino hide, cast the rib-like structure in an ominous gloom, lending definition to the bones and sinuous character of a Wraith-grown space.

Searching for weapons, Sheppard's pockets were almost empty of anything useful. Besides a smartphone, tickets, wrist watch and a small knife, he only packed a wallet loaded for leave. He held up his extended pocket knife and grimaced.

"Oh, _perfect_!" McKay hissed. "You're really going to maim someone now!" And he dived for the ancient ball on the floor.

One look at Rodney's regulation blue uniform and John could see the doctor wasn't packing any weapons either. Sheppard darted toward the doorway and checked the exterior hall. "It's clear." The passageway was empty and the ship was eerily quiet. "For now."

"Oh, great! This is just impossible!" McKay held the ball that had shrunk to the size of a golf ball in one hand and examined its surface, turning it between his fingers. "I don't even have my computer tablet! We are _so_ unprepared for this. And I need my computer because this ball is much smaller and totally different from the original, and not having my computer effectively reduces my ability to _do_ anything — especially, because _having_ it could mean the difference between us finding our way home or _not_ finding our way home and being stuck here, wherever _here_ is!"

"You mean Pegasus?"

"I'd assume so. The evidence is overwhelming."

The colonel was already back among the lab tables methodically searching the room. "Then help me look for a weapon."

"Like they'd conveniently leave a weapon lying around in here!"

"Rodney!"

The impatience in his tone with the scientist's pessimism must have worked because McKay halfheartedly started sifting through the odd piles of abandoned debris.

Col. Sheppard's careless rummaging sent a few long poles knocking against each other. He picked them up and swung experimentally. They shattered on impact into rotting toothpicks. Sheppard disgustedly crushed the stub into a fibrous handful and dusted it off on his jeans.

"Could you be any louder!" McKay hissed.

Sheppard's grip tightened on the knife. "There's nothing here."

McKay straightened with realization and started going through his jacket pockets. He pulled out an ancient scanner and dropped the ball inside the pocket. "Hello, hello." McKay's happy voice immediately drew Sheppard's eyes and Rodney held up the ancient scanner that glowed in his hand.

"Right." Sheppard nodded with relief and headed for the doorway again. "That's even better. You can lead from behind," and he held the extended pocket knife ready in front of him, trying not to feel seven kinds of foolish.

Dr. McKay concentrated on bringing up a floor plan, which Sheppard ogled over his shoulder. "Looks like a ship schematic."

"Uh huh," Rodney agreed. "Dart bay, that way," and he pointed to the left. "I think."

"Hostiles?"

"Getting there…" McKay frowned at the screen. "Hmm, that's strange."

"What?"

"Shhh!" Rodney glanced around the Wraith walls again, listening. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?!"

"Exactly. I don't hear anything and I'm not showing any Wraith on the scanner." McKay's fingers flew over the controls. "Oh no." He looked worried. "They're not hibernating … because this ship is dead! Dead in the water — or, rather, adrift in space."

"All right, that's not so bad," Col. Sheppard relaxed his grip on the pocket knife. "That's an entirely different problem."

"Not so bad?" Dr. McKay parroted in astonishment. "Right, as in, not so bad because guess who gets to fix this problem? Oh, it's me, isn't it? And me _without_ my essential computer equipment, which is not here because it's in my lab where I'm supposed to be working! So excuse me for being just a bit overwhelmed by the fact that I've been reduced to the equivalent — and let me put it in terms you might understand — of a hockey player trying to play hockey without a stick! So while it may not be so 'bad' that I don't have to worry about becoming someone else's meal and getting the life sucked out of me while I'm fixing, yet again, one of your mistakes — which, I might add, _is_ the problem — I'm definitely worried about getting our next meal and all the meals in between! This isn't exactly a Carnival Cruise."

"I'm sorry! Now, can we move on?" Sheppard pulled him into the hall. "There's got to be some power and systems running because we're not freezing or floating and you can still yell."

"Oh, you think power is going to solve all your problems? Well, think again, because it's hopeless! At this power-level reading, not much is working and even if I could fix the ship — which would be a miracle — without Teyla, there's no way to actually _fly_ the ship! Which brings me back to the fixing part because if the ship were fixable, the Wraith could be — I don't know — out shopping for parts and could show up any minute now wondering why Goldilocks is under the hood with a pocket knife and a Wraith primer!" McKay stabbed at the scanner forcefully.

"Rodney, I was thinking of 'ET phone home.'" Sheppard pulled his smartphone from his pocket and waved it at him. "Let's start with that."

"Oh, and tell everyone we're in the neighborhood!" he griped, but he took the phone thoughtfully, glanced at the menu and snorted. "Of course, there's no bars in this neighborhood."

"Bad neighborhood," John agreed. "Which means patching it through the ship's subspace communications."

"With a smartphone?" McKay cried. "That's _really_ going to work with Wraith tech! Why don't you just shoot me now — Oh, _right!_ How forgetful of me," Rodney directed a scathing look in his direction. "You can't shoot me without a gun!"

"Rodney, it's possible, right?"

"Barely," Rodney muttered and scrolled through John's menu. "What? Guns and Glory? Really? How do you live with yourself?"

John protested, "I've got plenty of good apps on it."

"Speedometer? Trapster?"

John smiled. "I like to go really fast."

"Yeah, those are _really_ going to make the ET phone home device sizzle." Rodney rolled his eyes. "I don't think you're going to get a speeding ticket in _this_ derelict."

"First we contact Atlantis," John ignored him and doggedly ploughed on, "Then maybe find out where the hell we are and if they left any weapons or darts lying around. _Then_, if there's enough time, you can knock yourself out under the hood."

"Well, that sounds more like a scavenger hunt than a plan," Rodney grumped but he focused on the scanner and conceded, "Power is good. It's quite comfortable, actually. Seems a little bit warmer than the usual Wraith hive. Ah, here we go. Closest power control station is that way … maybe."

The Colonel knew why McKay threw in the qualifier. Wraith halls didn't follow the human convention of a grid pattern. The main corridors branched off like a vascular system into different feeders that served a section. And no two ships grew alike.

The power station Rodney wanted to access was fairly close to the outer bulkhead which proved even more troublesome since it became even more isolated by compartmentalized bulkheads the closer they came to the outer wall. It served hull integrity, but it made it even more difficult to get around.

When they finally found the chamber, Rodney made himself comfortable under the console where he cut out an opening and started working on bypassing the Wraith access gene with the ancient scanner and a few live wires. It took him over thirty minutes to find the right connections with the scanner and then manually bridge the connections with the wire.

"I don't have full access, but this should do. I have power diagnostics and subspace communications." Rodney rose from under the console with the scanner in hand and he tapped the controls. Interested, John joined him in front of the hologram screen where a diagram flickered and solidified into the usual Wraith waterfall display.

"Hmm," Rodney scrolled over the schematic which looked to Sheppard like a negative of some blood vessels until he realized the power lines defined the ghostly hallways. The red lines converged on two yellow dots, one of which moved when Rodney moved the ancient scanner. "We're on a cruiser class. Look here," he pointed, "This narrow cell is the shortcut we missed."

"That _can't_ be a dart bay." John stabbed at the closest big chamber that was aft of their position without a hull nearby.

"Cargo, I think."

John's lips lifted in a barely contained sneer. "Great." They both knew what 'cargo' meant.

Rodney did something else and the map wavered and shrank in size. Blocks of gray obscured over a fourth of the ship and McKay blew out his cheeks. "Not much is working. Power grid is out in these sections and the bulkheads are closed. Looks like damage. I don't see a way to access the dart bay on our side, but see there?" He traced a route from the power station. "We'll have to cross through several sections to get to this service hanger. It's intact."

"Does it have a dart in it?"

McKay gave him an exasperated glare. "I don't know! Look, this is comparable to reading a Ouija board and about as accurate! All I can tell from here is that the power flow into it is miniscule, which is not a good sign."

"Okay, darts are iffy. That leaves us with communications. How long will it take you to install a galactic phone?"

"Look, let's be clear about this. There's no two-way communication involved here. It's more like a _Bat_ signal — since that's all I'm going to get out of your smartphone with apps like Speedometer, Trapster, and Gymtechnik."

"Don't be so negative." Sheppard gestured helplessly at the phone. "Until you've tried Speedometer in a puddle jumper, you haven't lived." He crossed his arms and smirked.

Rodney brightened with envy. "Really? You didn't! You'd have to turn off the cloaking to get GPS tracking. That's..."

John smiled broadly and he supplied the word McKay didn't want to admit, "Cool?"

"I was going to say reckless."

"The cloaking just happened to fail, miserably." Sheppard couldn't repress his delight. "When we get back, you should check that out — with me — because it might fail again."

Rodney tried not to grin and failed. "Sounds fun — I mean, for scientific reasons, of course, you'd need me there to fix it."

"Speaking of fixing things, how long will it take you to get this galactic phone operational?"

"My Wraith's not that good. Maybe two," he shrugged, "or four hours." McKay turned the smart phone over in his hand thoughtfully. "Anyway, there's only enough power for a weak SOS. It'll take days to store up enough for something that Earth can detect from Pegasus. I'll probably have to modify the drive to divert enough power and there's no telling from here how badly it's damaged."

"Then I think we should split up. I want to check out that hanger and look for some weapons." He'd need something if the signal attracted bad guys.

"If you're going to leave, then leave me the knife." Rodney held out his hand and John looked at him like he'd grown two horns. "Oh, come on! I need it to cut through the wall and tap into the power!"

"Oh." John handed over his only weapon and thought it was just as well. He wasn't that good at opening doors. "Look, I'll be back before you're done here and we can go find the drive together. Just … stay out of trouble."

Rodney snorted as he crawled back under the console. "Right. I'm not the one that dropped the ball."

"Right," John muttered and set off down the hall toward the helm to access the central corridor.

With the cruiser schematics in mind, Sheppard took his time exploring the cruiser along the way to the service hanger. But as soon as he saw the mangled darts suspended from the rafters, he lost interest in the rest of the ship. There was room for six darts; however, only three of the bays were in use. The ships were in pieces and some of them were missing critical parts, like engines and wings and cockpits.

These craft looked like they'd been salvaged for parts from a battle — an epic battle that had left these craft torn apart and crushed like inconsequential insects. As he examined the damage, his respect for the weapon that brought the Wraith darts down grew to apt admiration, but his disappointment was bleak. Between them, there weren't even enough parts to complete half a dart.

Leaving the mystery of the darts' demise, Sheppard explored the rest of the hanger looking for anything useful. The hanger didn't contain much else other than three closed doors, but he didn't have a clue which doorway to attack. A work bench along the far end had the equivalent of a Wraith crowbar laying on it — which looked exactly like every other crowbar in the universe, so John collected it and went to work on door number three.

It took more than a few tries to get the door to short open and he was rewarded by a view of decaying hexagonal cells lining the chamber that dwarfed a small control station. Some of the cells still contained liquid and their hoses snaked to other cells containing a hybrid of dead biological and machined parts. The broken cells lay with their exposed machinery under a layer of dust. The intact cells concealed a hazy irregular shape behind their membranes. Even intact, the cells looked dead, like they'd been paused midway in some Frankenstein experiment, suspended in time.

John walked into the plant and decided the Wraith didn't store anything remotely useful to his immediate survival in a "hybrid plant," although the installation was something Rodney would love to explore. The thought brought his hand up to his ear, tapping the non-existent headgear to check in with McKay.

The automatic reflex reminded him that McKay was working under a handicap without his equipment. He juggled the crowbar to look at his watch and resolved to get back to Rodney. The weight of the tool wasn't the familiar bantos sticks, but it felt solid like his P-90.

As he worked his way back to the main corridor, the path was familiar and the tension eased in his shoulders when the corridors led where he expected. So when he heard the footsteps, his first reaction was that McKay must have finished early, but the multiple footfalls accompanying it put his feet in motion before his brain caught up.

Sheppard skidded around the forking hallway and ducked back into the shadows, flattening his body against the wall of the Wraith ship. He edged deeper into the darkness behind the hall ribs that supported the junction ceiling and hoped that his blue cotton shirt would blend in well enough under the dim lighting.

It was unexplainably odd that the civilian clothes felt more foreign in that moment than the Wraith walls protecting him. His grip tightened on the crowbar in his hands as the footfalls turned into four distinct gaits that marched in rhythm and steadily grew louder.

"Crap," he mouthed silently and gritted his teeth.

The scraping sound grew closer and louder and then the junction filled with colorful movement that shocked his eyes with dizzy patterns of confusion. He blinked and tried to absorb the flash of bright green fabric, purple Pokka dots, rainbow stripes and fuzzy orange halos that floated by. He stared with disbelieving eyes and tried to process the image and calm his racing heart as the footsteps receded. There had been a moment when he could have sworn there were fake flowers blooming out of a Wraith rifle.

"Wake up, John," he whispered and pinched his bicep which smarted. "Okay, that hurt." But he knew what he saw and what he saw came straight out of nightmares.

With a small shudder of apprehension, he peeked into the empty junction before he crept out and hid next to the corridor wall that echoed with footsteps. John snuck a look in and confirmed again that there were four clowns dragging two people as they marched in step down the Wraith corridor. They carried Wraith rifles over their shoulders with bizarre flower bouquets sprouting around the bulbous muzzles. The troupe mocked a minuteman march with plastic flowers quivering and flopping with every rhythmic step while they effortlessly pulled along their victims behind them with one hand. The strength it took to drag a human with one arm in the collar, half lifting the body off the floor, could only be done so easily by a Wraith.

"Well, that's different," he murmured softly and frowned in confusion after the disappearing clowns.

John Sheppard had never liked clowns. He found them plastic and as fake as their painted expressions. Such a face hid something from the rest of the world, something shameful, evil — even a bit unnerving. But he'd learned to suppress those instincts in civilized company. Suddenly, right there, he confirmed everything he'd always suspected about _clowns_. His eyes narrowed_._ If the Wraith were disguised as clowns, they were up to something extra special.

"I _hate_ clowns," John snarled as he realized the clowns were headed straight toward Rodney.

•


	2. Chapter 2

_AN: Thanks for all the feedback! Enjoy another chapter from the archives._

•

**Two Clowns Short of a Three Ring Circus  
**by Fandomatic

•

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**Chapter Two**

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The clowns clomped around the curve and Sheppard could clearly hear their progress ahead. His sneakers made very little noise as he moved quickly down the organic hallway of the Wraith cruiser. He followed the noise, trying not to get too close to be seen and not too far behind to lose their racket. Mostly he tried not to think about the fact that he was following _clowns_ with little more than a Wraith crowbar for protection.

If Ronan had been here, he'd have no trouble tracking the drag marks. Hell, _he_ had no trouble tracking the drag marks as he followed the scraping noise. The cruiser floor was layered with dirt and the two humans made nice little clean paths along the hall.

After a few more twists, the hallway started to expand and Sheppard abandoned the direct path and hugged the supporting pillars on the side of the corridor. He could hear the Wraith more clearly now. They were working on something in the dim, cavernous space. John realized the opening was most likely the cargo bay he'd pointed out to McKay. He took his time and approached cautiously.

John searched quietly for a vantage point along the exterior hall and found a crawl space above their line of sight. The access ladder spiraled up to the walkway and he silently climbed it. Once on the landing, which flowed in and out onto little balconies around the huge chamber, Sheppard crawled to the nearest overhang.

The narrow ledge connected shallow alcoves, or cocoons filled with old human mummies that marched along the wall and lined the entire chamber to the ceiling. Their vacant eyes and frozen screams bore witness to the gallery of horror. Ancient dust spilled out of the cocoons and layered the air with the dusty smell of calcium and dry bones.

Below, the four clowns blocked his way back to Rodney as two of them cleaned out cocoons along the wall while the other two encased their new meals in the emptied ones. The old leathery membranes tore open like tissue paper and the dried up mummies fell onto a tarp with a puff of dust.

He really hated clowns and these Wraith gave him the creeps. Their faces were painted white with big red smiles and happy eyes. The hobo clown had false buck teeth hiding its pointy set of choppers but when the other Bozo hissed, the red smile turned it into a frightening creature. Clearly, they were not the harmless, sweet buffoons they pretended to be.

After clearing a dozen cocoon cells, the KP detail started to break apart. The clowns divided their ancient victims between the tarps, then they picked up their flowering Wraith rifles and dragged off their leftovers through the far connecting archway.

The clowns headed straight toward McKay again.

Below, the two humans hung limp, now fully enveloped in the writhing cocoon membranes and tentacles and still passed out cold. Sheppard looked down at the catatonic victims and decided to follow the Wraith. Worried, Sheppard hurried down the ladder and sprinted quietly after their noisy exit and quietly cursed the confusing branching hallways that stopped him from getting around them.

The Wraith didn't drag their human remains very far down the main artery. They opened a bulkhead wall and passed through a narrow cell into another section and through another bulkhead into a third section that wasn't anywhere near the power control station.

Relieved that McKay was safe for the moment, but curious when they didn't bother to close the doors behind them, John decided he could follow the Wraith just a bit longer to see where they went, so he could avoid them. After a few twists and turns, at the end of a corridor, they opened a door and light poured into the hall.

Sheppard blinked and tried not to look so shocked as a puff of fresh air ruffled his hair. The light dimmed briefly as the Wraith blocked the doorway, dragging the bodies outside.

The ship was not in space. It was beached under a blue, cloudless sky.

His luck was definitely changing. A smile played over his lips as he followed them through the opened pressure chamber and cautiously stepped out. The hatch opened to a sloping hill that dropped down into a dark forest of trees and a stiff warm wind flattened his thin blue shirt against his chest. The sun sat on the far horizon, peeking over the top of the hemlock forest. A sweet smell of pine and fresh earth after a spring rain filled his nostrils with the early morning breeze.

Below, the Wraith had disappeared into the woods, plunging through a dense wall of flowering laurels, so he climbed out far enough to see that the entire ship was hidden under a hill covered in trees. They were big trees, too — gigantic hemlocks that took hundreds of years to grow. The derelict Wraith cruiser had been there a long, long time.

Sheppard glanced back down toward the dense woods and hesitated. He decided he wasn't that interested in the Wraith undertaking, but was more worried about getting back to McKay, releasing the captives and getting the hell out of there in one piece. The captives were sure to know the location of the nearest stargate.

He ducked back into the ship and started back down the passageway. He hadn't gone more than a few turns when he heard the familiar scraping noise accompanied by the tramp of boots.

"Crap." John backed up and sprinted back to the hatch, hoping the other Wraith detail hadn't returned yet. Once outside, he scrambled along the hillside along an overgrown path that suddenly dipped down into a grove of laurels. He plunged into the hollow and rapidly settled in behind a fallen trunk where he could see an unobstructed view of the Wraith entrance.

Two clowns pulled a tarp of mummies out of the ship and started down the hill with their burden.

John frowned at the Wraith blocking his path back to Rodney before he realized there had to be another entrance on the other side of the ship where he'd first ran into them. They might even have a dart he could steal. His gaze fell on the overgrown trail that dropped into the ravine, out of sight from the Wraith. John eased out of hiding and took the path down into the hollow.

The sudden depression in the earth explained the problem with the dart bay which must have caved in a long time ago. Sheppard climbed the ridge out of the defunct dart bay and cautiously approached the top of the exposed hill and made sure he was hidden from behind. He crawled the last few feet and raised his head slowly for a peek.

What he saw made his mouth part in surprise and he stared, trying to reconcile the bizarre scene of the 1969 Volkswagen Beetle parked in the Wraith's front yard with clowns swarming all over it.

Painted a bright cherry red, the vintage little car had an enormous red rocket mounted on its roof. The rocket bore the letters, ACME, clearly stenciled in white across its fuselage. Below, the car windows were decorated with red-checkered curtains that hid the interior from view. A clown in a classic red fireman hat reached into the rocket panel and a brief shimmer of white filled the interior of the car, glowing past the drawn curtains and accompanied by the whine of a Wraith culling beam. Another fireman opened the passenger door and hauled out a limp woman in a tan pantsuit. She was dumped unceremoniously in a living tangle of human bodies a short distance from the car while two more hobo clowns emerged, one in large plaid pants, the other in a pea green caricature of a suit. Both of them carried Wraith rifles with flowering bouquets sprouting around the muzzles. The new clowns immediately gathered up a few catatonic victims from the human pile and dragged them toward the ship.

John's grip tightened on the crowbar as the glaring truth hit him. The evidence was overwhelming. How else could he explain the conventional clown costumes, the classic 1969 Volkswagen and the cartoonish ACME rocket? He was still on Earth. Somehow the Wraith had established a foothold and had kept it hidden for centuries.

Growing more and more disturbed, he watched as the fireman closed the door and another whine from the culling beam rent the air. Two more clowns got out of the car. The two new clowns wore twin red-striped shirts with tiny twin bowler hats perched on their ridiculous green wigs and where one wore a joker smile, the other wore an equally creepy frown. The fireman said something to them and the new clowns picked up two victims out of the pile and drug them off toward the open hatch.

It was bizarre the way the Wraith adopted earth's clown costumes. In fact, the entire scene was surreal as Wraith clowns kept coming out of the tiny little car. It made perfect sense to infiltrate a population with an accepted disguise that allowed the Wraith free movement, but the Wraith weren't given to hiding what they were. It meant they were vulnerable to discovery while they operated out of their derelict ship. All it would take was one well-aimed ballistic missile and he could kill them all, every last clown in the circus.

He just had to get his phone back to call in the coordinates and rescue a few humans along the way.

John lay frozen on the exposed hill and watched them work with mounting alarm because the traffic pattern steadily increased the number of Wraith roving the halls of the ship. As the ship filled with Wraith, their probability of discovery increased. He needed to warn Rodney but both doors were blocked with activity.

Trapped on the ridge, he counted over twenty clowns getting out of the vehicle before the workers started to disband. Together they had brought in about the same number of unconscious victims to fill the cocoons.

The clowns left in charge of the vehicle, drug out a coiled Wraith cable from the ship and attached it to the rocket panel. It was almost funny the way it cocked its head to the side and unplugged the cable with obvious confusion. It hissed at the other fireman and pointed at the cable end. For an instant, the buffoon was replaced by a menacing creature.

The other fireman tried plugging it in, but when the connection didn't produce whatever they were waiting for, the Wraith bared their fangs at each other and one of them pointed toward the ship and said something. The other one pointed at the Wraith rifles and hissed a reply. With new purpose, the two firemen picked up their rifles with the wacky bouquets decorating the barrels and hurried into the cruiser.

Sheppard's thoughts immediately went to Rodney and that useless galactic signal he was working on because Rodney had wanted to tap into the power grid. The firemen were going to trace the problem straight to his door.

•

Crystal Chaucer — discerning clairvoyant extraordinaire as proclaimed on her business card but simply known as "the ghost lady" to the new budding television crew around her — stifled a squeak of astonishment at the needle spiking like a drum stick into the red. Maybe, just maybe, the house was really haunted this time and it had been worth the wait to shoot the last segment of their day at the crack of dawn just to catch that gaudy chandelier glowing like a disco ball in the morning sun.

The exhaustion of staying up all night trying to catch ghosts on camera disappeared. She quickly sidled away from the instrument installed in the dining room, where she'd been relegated to waiting alone for her cue, and walked innocently into the foyer where Diana was reading her lines into the camera. As a show hostess with a degree in parapsychology, the tall young star was breaking new ground with her revolutionary episodes of _Haunting Science. _

"Finished in 1855 in Connecticut's heartland, Gerhardt lavished his new bride with this astonishing chandelier…"

"Oh!" Crystal did her best stumbling half-collapse, complete with fluttering eyelids and managed to clutch the side board on the way down. She avoided clutching at Diana because the first time she'd introduced a trembling clairvoyant episode, Diana had recoiled and dropped her on her petite boney rump. Her trembling arms shimmied the furniture so hard that the vase danced over the surface and the candelabra tottered like a drunken fool before it crashed nicely to the floor.

"Miss Chaucer!" she heard Diana's startled rebuke because she'd broken in too early.

Feeling pretty satisfied with her eye-rolling and self-induced stupefied expression, she was well into her performance before the hostess finally recovered and started narrating the events as they happened into the camera. "Oh, my, she's having a clairvoyant episode. This is not rehearsed. You're seeing this, unedited as it happens!"

Crystal Chaucer knew what she looked like on camera. Her carefully chosen eclectic wardrobe made a colorful presentation from her brightly died red hair to her fake fingernails. In fact, everything about Crystal was fake — even her name. Christened Jane Spence by her terribly normal parents, she'd fought the chaste and proper stereotype her whole life — that is, up to the age of eighteen when she'd changed her name right after she'd experienced an astonishing series of clairvoyant episodes which she was determined to repeat.

"This doesn't happen very often and this certainly indicates that there is a psychic disturbance in this old house that Crystal Chaucer, our very own ghost lady, can pick up. Sometimes Miss Chaucer can sense things in the ectoplasma that surrounds all living organisms that the instruments cannot detect. Right now, Crystal is communing with this morphic field on a subconscious level, tapping into that library of combined human experience. It's important to wait for the shaking to subside, which signals the end of the clairvoyant episode, and only then try to talk to her, gently bringing her back to our plane of reality. Right after the episodic incident, she may be able to actually channel the spirit world and relay any information or messages lingering in her consciousness…"

Crystal continued the shaking and ignored the excited voices around her. She waited for the nerd to come flying in with the ticker tape trail, her validation for a bigger paycheck, which happened just as she predicted. Sometimes it was scary being able to predict the future so accurately.

"Diana! We've got multiple hits everywhere in the house!" The pipsqueak waved her ticket to fame in front of the camera and Crystal's twitching subsided as the boy continued his report in a rush. "The sensors out in the barn, the guest house and the garage all lit up like Christmas trees!"

Crystal frowned at this news and moaned loudly to get their attention back, reminding them who sensed it first. "Oh, my head!" She let them help her sit up from where she'd collapsed gently to the floor, mostly to buy time as she thought about freckle face's information.

"Miss Chaucer, are you all right?"

Someone started fanning her face. "Crystal, talk to me," Diana urged and patted her tiny hand. "We have confirmation. Brian's instruments recorded the disturbance. What happened?"

"The psychic blast was too intense," Crystal whispered dramatically. "It's a roar … coming from far away and all over at the same time," which was suitably vague for television and would agree with anything the little nerd came up with. "It's so … intense!"

"Look, I have data," Brian interrupted.

"In a minute, Brian," Diana shushed him. "Miss Chaucer, where…, where is it now?"

"Too strong to tell…"

"Brian?"

"Yeah, it was strong all right," snapped the pipsqueak. "But like I've been trying to tell you, I've got recorded data and I think I can triangulate the event and locate the source."

The _Haunting Science_ crew all stared at each other, stunned that their scientific quest for a confirmed psychic event could actually be feasible — not that Crystal was a slacker by any means, but the intangible could only stretch so far to an educated audience.

It didn't take a psychic to know their next move. "Yes," Crystal whispered. "They are calling to me to find them … They are lost, so lost and so far from … hooome…"

•

Dr. Fred Dietrich yawned. He checked his watch again. The seconds were ticking by, but the hands hadn't budged. He stuck the watch face next to his ear to confirm it still ticked. He'd wound it this afternoon, but it was stuck on slow. Then he glanced down his cobbled together bank of instruments that monitored the early morning sky where Vega, the brightest star of Lyra, was due to pass overhead, beginning in ten minutes. He checked his watch again. Still ten minutes.

Impatient, Fred looked out the picture window to make sure The Small Array was pointed in the right direction, but it was still night and he only saw his own reflection in the glass, not the red New Mexico desert or The Big Array looming on the horizon.

He didn't have to see the rising installation to get a case of the Joneses. The tall skinny reflection looked back at him with oversized ears and mocking eyes because he would never be important enough to rate The Big Array. Then his reflection was joined by the other two volunteers with his SETI project, just now getting there for their early morning shift in the small cinder block building. Ordinarily the two were enthusiastic in searching the heavens for alien life but both were unusually tardy.

The rather large male volunteer from Berkley bypassed the niceties and pointed right at the unseen view with a trembling finger. "Did you see what that pin-headed little rat did?"

Fred groaned and dived for the headphones. That explained their tardiness.

"That's right," Laurence continued without a beat as Fred slipped on the headphones. "That pasty-faced communist turned the southeastern dish to tune in that soul station again just to spite us! Now it's out of alignment again! He sabotaged our research for the last time!"

The blast of noise thrummed with frantic rhythm and Fred hastily jerked off the headset. Ross, the little twerp, had struck again. Last time it took thirty minutes to realign the dish but the clock was literally ticking this time.

"Those egg-heads don't take us seriously!" Susie threw her purse into a file cabinet and slammed the drawer. "Soul is not an alien language!" she snarled and her beautiful black chin lifted.

Fred glanced at his watch again. "Nine minutes! We're gonna miss it!" Where had the time flown? "Damn, we'll have to isolate it from the main array to get anything worth looking at. Laurence, pull the plug on the walleye! Susie, see if you can—"

"Already on it," and Susie sat down at the keyboard to start the recording sequence while Laurence silenced the small dish that sat cockeyed like a lazy eye, pointed straight at the eastern horizon while its cousins faced the heavens together. The next thirteen minutes were full of frantic activity as the three SETI researchers pulled together a clean record of Lyra as it began to pass by overhead, just before the crack of dawn.

Only then did Fred relax and take a look at the recorded graph rolling out of the printer. But the graph wasn't as clean as he expected. "What the hell? Laurence, did you isolate the right dish?"

"Uh, yeah!" Laurence frowned and walked over. "It was kinda hard to miss."

Fred frowned and muttered, "Even so, this shouldn't be coming out of a radio station on the east coast."

"What's coming from the east coast?" Susie frowned and abandoned the keyboard to peer over their shoulders.

Fred felt the excitement building. "Would you look at that! Look how strong it is at the beginning!"

Laurence pointed at the graph. "That's before I isolated the dish."

"But it's still there," Susie objected and pointed at the printout spewing out of the printer line by line. "It's a definite pattern but it's still there."

"Do you think we stumbled on a government project?" Laurence ventured hesitantly.

Laurence's question brought their heads up and they looked at each other with lips parted in wide-eyed surprise.

Fred, as the lead scientist, dashed their hopes of discovering a cover up. "I don't know of anything that could produce such an intrusive signature. It's affecting all the bands. It's like a tiny pulsar going off, beep, beep, beep, right here on Earth, but that's impossible."

"Maybe it's … alien," Susie suggested.

The SETI team stared at each other in a moment of calm revelation before the excitement broke through in a contest of voices. The room filled with rapid fire suggestions for the next course of action for such an auspicious occasion. Laurence wanted to follow protocol and call in a government agency before they did anything else. Susie wanted to exclude all government involvement and release the information to the media, despite her signed confidentiality agreement. And Fred wanted confirmation from several sources before they looked like a bunch of fools and called _anyone_. Without a consensus, the SETI team argued heatedly and then came to quick solution that fulfilled everyone's expectations. They bowed to Fred's scientifically sound wisdom but immediately broke ranks and rushed off to make some personal phone calls.

Instead of calling a contact in Hawaii, Susie's first call went to the notorious JJ Jerrod, or rather his organization, Extraterrestrial Conspiracy, known as Etc. for short. More specifically, she called her ex-boyfriend, Dallas, who worked for JJ, because Susie was not just an unbiased scientific observer as the SETI group supposed. She was an Etc. plant, sent there to gather first-hand evidence of government tampering because Susie believed her government was responsible for covering up multiple visits from extraterrestrials in the past.

On the other hand, Laurence was not the innocent university volunteer from Berkley that the SETI group supposed either. He also believed the Earth had been visited by aliens, but Laurence was paid by a secretive government agency to report any contact SETI made and bypass layers of bureaucracy. Laurence's first call went to Cheyenne Mountain with the cryptic message, "It looks like we'll have visitors for dinner," which called for immediate and decisive action from the government who didn't realize their code was so appropriate to the situation.

Their leader, Dr. Fred Dietrich, neither believed nor disbelieved in aliens and was completely oblivious to his team's biases. SETI had merely awarded him a grant because his method of searching for alien signatures fell in line with their budget. But Fred knew The Big Ear had a much bigger budget with even more sensitive instruments and he thought he could sway his colleague to lend an ear to his project.

Fred's call began with, "Uh, hi George, Fred here. Yeah, Susie's fine. Hey, I was just wondering, are you guys getting some, uh, unusual signatures over there? Oh, you know, a rhythmic signature, something of a regular thing…Oh, really? Well, have you tried turning it east? No, I mean east as in horizon east. Yes, I know. No, I'm not smoking anything. Yeah, it's weird. Well, we're getting something of a stronger signal out toward Boston…"

Of all the calls, Fred's call had the most immediate effect. Within thirty minutes, any dish not manned by a hermit was pointed in the general direction of Boston as the grapevine buzzed with astonishment and Fred received his confirmation from multiple sources. The source of the signal originated from a region just west of Boston in a small state forest near Hartford, Connecticut.

That was about the time the phone went dead and the military arrived in force.

•

Sheppard's grip tightened on the crowbar as he half slid down the hill to the Volkswagen below. John felt utterly exposed without his P-90 and the crowbar wasn't going to be good enough. He quickly checked inside the passenger door, but the Wraith hadn't left any of their rifles behind.

Then he stared, just a little bit astonished that they had left the key in the ignition. He quickly reached over, pulled the single key out and looked around the car for a good hiding spot. He settled on the floor mat that extended under the driver's seat. He lifted the corner and tucked the key under it, covering it with the carpet. It was completely hidden and that was one less thing he had to worry about chasing him.

His luck was holding.

Feeling somewhat smug, he slipped inside the hatch and followed the drag marks easily back to where he'd intercepted the Wraith clowns the first time. John hefted the crowbar thoughtfully as he retraced his steps to the eerily silent cargo chamber with the ghoulish audience. But the Wraith had emptied almost the entire lower level where they'd stored the captives. The waiting empty cocoons gave him a chill as his quiet footfalls echoed eerily back. Then his eyes focused on the fresh humans and he paused to check on their condition. He shook the first victim's shoulder without much hope.

"Wake up!" he urged.

The man was young, fit, in his mid-twenties and wore his hair loose and touching a tattered green collar. The sandy brown locks hung over his eyes, which didn't open. He moaned and the cocoon tightened around him. The moans stopped abruptly.

Over thirty adults now occupied the cocoons on the main floor and they didn't show any signs of consciousness. The culling beam effect was still too fresh to rescue them but the number of victims gave him a better count of the Wraith roaming the ship. He postponed his hope of freeing them and hurried back to get Rodney out of the trouble he'd stirred up with the Wraith.

It took him a lot longer to work his way up the corridor and avoid the random Wraith clowns patrolling the halls. The patrols gave him hope that Rodney was still free and annoying them.

In his haste, he almost stumbled right into the Wraith swarming over the power control station where McKay had been. These guys weren't dressed up as clowns either. The three males grew long white manes that fell past their shoulders and they wore the dark leather overcoats of the Wraith. They were so engrossed over the modified power station that they didn't even look up.

Sheppard backed up and quickly ducked down into another section. The gnawing worry was just sinking in when a white, fleshy hand reached out and grabbed him accompanied by a barely whispered, "Sheppard!"

Relieved to see McKay hiding in the shadows, John lowered the crowbar. "I was beginning to worry!"

"Where have you been?!" the doctor hissed and pulled him deep inside a darkened room. "I had to hide because the Wraith showed up and did you see some of them? They're dressed like _clowns_! You're not going to freak out are you? Because of the, you know, coulrophobia … I know I'm definitely disturbed by this, but that's because I find them somewhat inane and charming — in a juvenile way. I have to constantly remind myself that they are really terrifying creatures, but you probably don't have any problem seeing them for what they really are, right?" Then McKay noticed the crowbar in his hand. "Where did you get _that?_"

Sheppard picked the least offensive question. "In the hanger—" John began.

"That looks like a crowbar."

"It probably is. I think we're beached somewhere on Earth." John gave McKay a moment to absorb that as he explained running into the Wraith, the open hatch and the Volkswagen Beetle parked at the front door with a Wraith culling unit installed in the ACME rocket.

When he finished, McKay nodded thoughtfully. "Well, that makes sense with the ship's low power readings and the probable transfer limits of our ancient ball — given its size — but how'd the Wraith get here?"

"Aside from their pimped out ride?" John smiled and shook his head ruefully. "I don't even know how _we_ got here, Rodney," he reminded and then doggedly focused back on tactics before Rodney pointed out that it was his fault again. "Look, we need to get off this ship and call in some firepower. I counted over twenty Wraith so far but I think it's more like twice that number and I only have one crowbar — so where's my phone?"

"ET's trying to use it."

_"What?"_

"You wanted an ET phone home device, so I built one — cleverly, I might add, by using the scanner as an interface translator between computer languages — and then, as I was modifying the long range subspace signal, the Wraith discovered my power tap, so I did the sensible thing and hid."

"Wait." John glared at Rodney with his recent concern forgotten. "The Wraith have our _galactic_ phone? They could use it to call up their buddies in Pegasus!"

"Well, they can't use it without the gene." Rodney wiggled his fingers in the air smugly.

John's eyebrows rose. "Nice," he nodded.

"However, that doesn't exclude them from taking a look at the smartphone and reverse engineering something on their end — even though the power requirement to reach that far are way beyond the capabilities of this ship at the moment, being derelict and all — but I'd suggest we go before they figure out they need _us_ to make it work."

Of course McKay was right to worry they would become targets. "Well, let's just keep _that_," he wiggled his fingers, "little secret between us, then."

"I wasn't planning on announcing it — especially after wasting all my time on a pointless task that could reach out and bite us in the backside," McKay grumped.

In the dim light, John could see his fear mirrored in McKay's eyes that they'd inadvertently left Earth's front door open. John's jaw set stubbornly and he gripped his crowbar. Rodney's fear just confirmed his plan to come back in full commando mode and destroy it all. He had to slam that door shut before it even opened, but the reality was clear. He didn't have the firepower to do it yet.

"Right," Sheppard agreed and pulled Rodney back toward the doorway. "But first, we rescue the captives. Then we get out of here in one piece."

So what's your plan to free the Americans?" he whispered at the door as Sheppard paused to check the hall.

"Cut them free. Sneak out the back." John hefted the crowbar. "Keep it low tech until we can contact the Daedalus."

"Right," the scientist muttered behind him, clearly not happy with a low tech plan. "I thought the Daedalus would've picked us up by now. We must be inside a dampening field."

"Yeah, that's probably keeping the ship hidden," John agreed and then asked hopefully, "Do you think you can turn it off?"

"Not without my equipment, meager as it is!"

"Then we keep it low tech."

John cautiously checked the empty corridor with his crowbar ready and motioned Rodney to follow him. The two crept quietly up the passageway toward the cargo chamber, keeping to the shadows. Rodney followed him silently and mimicked his movements as he ducked behind supporting pillars. The hall joined another passageway and Sheppard hurried through the junction and found another alcove to hide in. McKay flattened his body against the wall right next to him while Sheppard listened for approaching footsteps and checked out the hallway.

"I could really use that scanner right about now," Rodney whispered urgently behind him. "I've got a really bad feeling about this…"

The noise of the door whisking open behind them confirmed it. Rodney was psychic — or, more likely, he predicted doom so often that he was bound to turn the odds in his favor. It was like guessing tails every time the coin flew into the air and nailing it on the head fifty percent of the time. Only this time the odds were heavily against them and only a crowbar stood between them and a feeding hand. With a pained wince, Sheppard met Rodney's astonished eyes and gritted out, "Run," as he charged the surprised clown in the open doorway behind them.

Dressed in the most hideous green suit with its florescent dyes causing afterburner shock on his retinas, the Wraith was clearly more astonished at Sheppard's swift reaction to it. Its jaw dropped and the lax mouth parted the painted smile, not in a snarl, but stunned disbelief, as the colonel rammed the long crowbar into its chest with brutal force that buried it to the bow in the iron. The stunning blow caused the dying Wraith to drop its rifle. Its surprise drained to an open hiss and instinctively the Wraith reached out with its feeding hand. But no amount of feeding would heal _that_ wound with the crowbar driven all the way through its chest and left sticking out the back.

John dodged the hand and dived for the Wraith rifle as a stunner bolt sizzled over his head and crackled all over the stabbed Wraith, who crumpled on top of him. Struggling to free the rifle, Sheppard heard several more shots coming from where McKay should have been. Then the rifle cleared the pea-green suit and John flipped behind the carcass and aimed across its shoulders at the vision in large plaid pants standing over McKay's quiet body.

The rifle hummed and spat two bolts at the plaid clown, dropping him in his tracks. John's aim swiveled to the next clown in line and he grouped his shots under its fake lapel flower. It was falling when a squeegee horn honked twice behind him. With his heart pounding in his chest, Sheppard rolled and aimed up at the fireman in the open doorway as its stunner bolt rippled over his body and froze his muscles.

On the verge of panic, he fought the effect and concentrated on leveling the muzzle at the yellow slicker. The fireman leaned over him and purred, "Naptime, human, then dinnertime." And then the squeegee horn brayed again like a gasping donkey right before the next shot mercifully ended the nightmare.

•


	3. Chapter 3

AN: I'm pleased you're still reading! Warning, this chapter contains character death, but he's my character, so I can, with relish. Enjoy!

•

**Two Clowns Short of a Three Ring Circus  
**by Fandomatic

•

* * *

**Chapter Three**

* * *

Jay Jerrod was unhappily awake. He would have been happier if he'd still been asleep and unconscious of the hangover he'd inflicted on himself. But last night he'd gotten sloshed, so sloshed that he would forget the last few painful months of the IRS audit and the general harassment that had found its way "mysteriously" to his door. Of course, it wasn't a mystery to Jay that he'd been singled out. Jay believed the government acted to discredit him and his ongoing investigation of a government conspiracy. The audit was merely confirmation that the government had something worth hiding and Jerrod thought he knew what it was.

That was his trouble, thinking. Now if he could prove it, it would make all his troubles go away. But even if he could prove it, the general population would not be ready to believe that the Earth had been visited by extraterrestrials, not just once, but many times. They would even laugh if he proposed the center of that alien activity was right here, and Jay surveyed the dark woods surrounding his house, right on the east coast of the United States.

He squinted at the rising sun, brightening the world around him with too much light for his sensitive eyes and retreated with his cup of coffee back into the house and onto the couch with his icepack soothing his pounding head. It was where Dallas found him a few hours later fast asleep.

"Get up, JJ." Dallas knocked the icepack to the floor and hauled him to his feet. "We're going for a ride."

"What?"

"The team's putting together a location." Dallas grinned and his white teeth flashed with shocking brilliance next to his almost black skin. Dallas was a rare oddity in the black community. His skin was the color of extra dark chocolate, not the cocoa color of his brothers. Dallas was the darkest man Jay had ever known and his eyes literally gleamed white with excitement in the dark room. "We got a lead and it's big. _Really_ big."

"What?" Jay Jerrod stared blankly at his friend and dimly asked, "What? What lead?"

"It's all over the grapevine. SETI's been tracking an alien signal coming out of Connecticut. My source told me they're trying to control the information. Some government agency already came in and made the SETI project a black hole." Dallas's grin got bigger. "But get this. The signal's so strong that it's interfering with all sorts of sensors everywhere. There's no way to hide it. Almost anyone with a dish is picking up something."

Jay blinked. "No kidding?"

"No kidding."

Jerrod scrubbed his hair and the beginnings of a smile started to form on his face. "Well, what the hell are we waiting for? Let's go find some aliens!"

•

Brian, the pipsqueak, holding a sensor that she'd learned detected electromagnetic waves but couldn't be distinguished from a directional antennae in her opinion, led them further from camp and around in circles in the forest. It certainly looked like it was guiding them since it emitted a muffled tone from the electronic suitcase that Brian carried. Wherever the little geek pointed the little dish, the tone would rise and fall, just like their path through the wilderness. But Crystal was getting tired of wondering around looking for ghosts behind every tree when it was quite obvious they weren't going to see anything since sunup two hours ago when the _Haunting Science_ crew raced out of Hartford, arrived at the trailhead and trekked all the way out here following the little nerd.

Diana followed the technician with tireless curiosity and Crystal kept pace, feeling more and more like the investigation was getting away from her. Frankly, Miss Chaucer was tired of walking and yearned to curl up in a sleeping bag back at the camp, which the other half of their expedition already had the sense to do. Not even a cameraman followed them. _They_ even had more sense, besides the fact that they were all on the night shift and operated like bats. Anyway, the dark hemlocks overhead made the sea of forest trunks unnerving in the unnatural twilight of midmorning and Crystal was searching for _any_ reason to go back. She was about to say as much, but couched in more psychic terms that referenced her growing uneasiness, when she saw it.

A chill of pure dread crawled up her spine, leaving the hairs on her neck standing straight up. Mutely, Crystal pointed toward the ghostly apparition which sped away weaving through the trees, and belatedly remembered to cover her shock by closing her dropped jaw.

"Did you see _that_?!" Diana squeaked as she instinctively clutched at the only man there.

"See what?" Brian looked up from the instrument at the lovely Diana and blinked.

"Oh, my God, I saw a ghost! I really saw it! Did you see it? It went through there!" Diana pointed up the hill. "Let's follow it!"

"Oh, no," Crystal shook her head emphatically, "I don't think that's a good idea." She looked down at her feet that seemed to have rooted her to the spot. "L-Let's go back."

"Oh, come on," Diana urged and plunged fearlessly toward the hill with Brian in tow. "This is what we came here to do. I saw a ghost! I mean '_really_ saw something supernatural' and I saw it go that way. We're Para investigators. Come on, let's go investigate!"

"I really think we should go get some … cameras?" And Crystal watched their backs as they climbed further away, leaving her behind, alone. Suddenly, her feet wanted to follow them. "Wait! Don't leave me!" Breathless, she scrambled after them through the spongy forest carpet with fear driving her shorter legs to work harder.

"What exactly did you see?" Brian's head swiveled faster than his forgotten detector as he actually started to notice his surroundings.

"It was a ghost. It looked like a shimmering form that floated into the trees." Diana glanced back at Crystal puffing along behind them. "Crystal saw it first. She pointed and then I saw it. Then it took off up the hill."

"But I wasn't getting any readings down there," he complained and Crystal could see the resentment building in his thin shoulders when he looked toward her. "Did you…" the scowl was barely contained, "sense something?"

The feeling of dread returned. Crystal's throat had gone dry and she didn't care anymore if they thought she was scared. "Please, let's go back! There's something here and it's scaring me!" She turned to look behind her, the path back to camp, and saw it again. She shrieked.

"I see it!" Brian pointed with the detector and he stared at the apparition with his jaw dropped.

"Shh!" Diana shushed them. "Try to communicate, Crystal! What's it want? Who is it?"

"There it goes!" Brian shouted and the ghost flew past them into the trees, barely a shimmer in the densely filtered morning sun.

Diana and Brian abandoned her and chased after the spirit. They ran across the hill toward where the ghost had disappeared into the darkened canopy.

"Don't leave me!" wailed Crystal and plunged after them without another thought about how tired her legs were after hiking all morning. By the time she caught up to them, where the ghost had disappeared from sight, she was determined to persuade the two to abandon the chase.

"Where'd it go?"

"Did you see it?"

"It disappeared into thin air!"

"I thought it went that way!"

"There it is, over there!"

"Wait! Stop!" But the two rushed past Crystal and into another gully where the apparition skirted around the tree line and suddenly just vaporized. Panting with widen eyes, Crystal ran after them and let gravity pull her down into the ravine. Her speed carried her into Brian and she bowled him over in a tangle of legs.

"Crystal! Are you all right?" Diana helped her sit up.

"Yes, but you have to stop chasing it!" Crystal burst out as she jumped to her feet with her red hair tousled and wilder than usual. Mud stained her flowered skirt and pine needles decorated the knitted poncho giving her the appearance of a porcupine.

"What? Why?" Brian got up and dusted off his jeans. "Clearly, it's leading us somewhere."

"Clearly, you're an idiot," Crystal snapped back. "We've gone in three totally different directions since we spotted it — not that you'd be able to tell with that stupid electro-whatever detector!"

"Hey, my Dicke radiometer got us here which is more than you can say!"

"Well, I _am_ trying to say something now!" Crystal cried. "You have to listen! We're in great danger!"

The two looked at her as if she'd lost her marbles. Then the goose bumps rose on her arms and Chaucer's lips parted in fear. "It's here," she moaned and wildly cast around for the source that frightened her so much. But the woods were empty. Then she heard a swish, closely followed by two other swishes, and her muscles froze, locked in place as a blue light discharged around her. The last thing she saw before she crumpled senseless to the ground was a funny little red-striped clown in a purple bowler hat who magically appeared from behind a tree. And how cute was that silly bouquet of flowers he held!

•

Waking up felt strange. She expected to wake up outside on the ground where she'd fallen.

The dread that had found her in the forest had not left. More afraid than confused, Crystal Chaucer pushed up off the smooth floor with her hands. Her whole body felt like tiny pins and needles were stabbing her everywhere. Next to her, Diane also stirred and groaned as she tried to sit up. But Brian was the first to actually make it into a sitting position and his touch was the first confirmation that something was terribly wrong.

"They awaken, as commanded," a voice hissed.

The tone was all wrong and a chill crawled up Crystal's arms. Her head lifted and she stared around at the strange surroundings trying to make sense of the structure filled with bright clowns. The dim light made it hard to see the entire chamber which she took for a cave.

The people in the cavern were easier to recognize. The clowns were busy with activity. They easily held a young police officer on his knees across the room. The cop's lips tightened and he barely acknowledged them with a nod and got a cuff across the cheek for it.

There was another man lying on the floor, out cold, dressed in something that resembled a blue track suit. And then her eye found the face of a dark haired man on a table. At first, she thought he'd been beheaded. It took another few seconds to realize his body was strapped to a table with dark coils that wound tightly over his body, obscuring the form beneath. Organic tendrils attached to his temples led up to a wall with a transparent blue waterfall behind him with strange symbols floating in it.

Then one of the tendrils _moved! _She gasped in horror but didn't have time to absorb any more as a hand jerked her rudely to her knees.

"Kneel!"

Again, the voice was all wrong and Crystal obeyed automatically. Brian and Diane knelt to either side of her with confusion on their faces.

"What did you do to my ship?" The voice reverberated in Crystal's ears and her eyes widened as the fireman with the orange hair separated himself from the central tables and loomed over them.

"What? What ship?" Brian asked.

The clown hissed angrily and Crystal shrank from his sunken blue eyes. "Do not dissemble. I know you are working with them. Now who are they and who modified my vessel?"

"I-I-I don't know!"

Crystal mutely shook her head in agreement. The clown looked exhausted and very disagreeable.

Then he removed his heavy glove. "I grow hungry and weary of your lies. I see I must demonstrate what happens to those who displease me." He turned his palm to face them and Crystal stared with both curiosity and repulsion at the slit opening on the palm of the clawed hand. She shrieked when it flexed like a mouth.

Then the clown thrust his hand at Brian and the palm made contact with his chest. Brian roared in pain.

Terrified, Crystal struggled to get away, but was held in place by the clown behind her. The nerd she'd secretly envied kept screaming with barely a pause for breath. His eyes bulged and he gripped the arm attached to him with weakening hands. His shirt around the clown's hand lost its new luster and crumpled to dust, leaving a brittle hand print in the fading fabric. Beneath the hand she could see blood oozing on Brian's chest. Then he started to grow older as if his vitality was draining from him. Lines formed around his eyes. His skin, so youthful, lost its baby fat and thinned, revealing age spots and deepening wrinkles. The wrinkles crackled like dried mud that shrank around his skull and Brian withered into a skeleton before her eyes. Old age weakened his cries, but there was no merciful end with unconsciousness. Brian's eyes watched his own life taken from him to the last breath, with the leavings of bone and skin discarded at the last with a silenced scream. Not even his clothes were left untouched as they continued to crumple and age around his fallen corpse, left an agonized mummy.

With Brian's death, the clown fixed his attention on the women. Diane and Crystal clung together with tears running down their cheeks.

The fireman's nostrils flared as if he savored their terror. "Now who are those men and who modified my ship?" The strange voice vibrated with a new savage strength.

Crystal shook her head. "I-I-I don't know them."

Diane sniffled. "Please…"

A cry drew her attention across the room. It was the cop. He made a lunge for the weapons left on the table and was batted down like a dog.

"You leave them alone!" he yelled. "Leave them alone!"

Two clowns grabbed the struggling officer and forced him to his knees between them.

"_Silence_!" The command cracked over the room and the policeman instantly obeyed.

"Yes," the head clown hissed at the cop in a chilling tone. "It is _time_."

The announcement made the officer pale and his eyes couldn't avoid staring at the new mummy.

"Wake them now." His gaze swept over the prisoners. "We will see who blinks first."

•

The colonel woke up to screaming.

Feeling slowly returned to his numbed body, accompanied by the usual sensation of firing nerves on every surface of his skin, so he knew it couldn't be _his_ screaming because his body was still out of touch with the real world. The screaming stopped just as it occurred to him that it could be McKay's screaming. Worried, he concentrated on moving his eyelids which fluttered open. With that small movement, his awareness returned in a rush of pins and needles, and his eyes focused on a clown with a Wraith's multi-layered voice.

"Have you an answer?"

Dressed in a red fireman's hat, oversized boots and a long yellow slicker with twin caution stripes trimming the edge, the clown was only missing the heavy gloves over his clawed hands. The clown's fake round eyes met Sheppard's for a moment before it dismissed his presence and focused back on its prey. Its powerful stance dominated a kneeling human.

It wasn't McKay.

"Once again, are you working with these humans?" The fireman's bloody palm threatened the man's bared chest, already stained with a fresh palm print. A dark navy police uniform had been pulled open and shoved down over his elbows, the tee shirt ripped to his belly, and the bulletproof vest discarded on the floor.

The cop touched the wound in horror. "No! I told you I don't know them! Ah, God, what did you do to me?!"

Sheppard's eyes lost focus on the scene as he fixated on the opposite table just beyond the Wraith. It was layered with weapons. Handguns, shotguns, rifles, knives, and even the odd Tommy gun that the Wraith had taken from their victims were stacked along the wall, just beyond reach of the cop swaying on his knees. Among the arsenal, he spotted the ancient artifact and his wallet thrown carelessly on the pile. The sight of so many weapons near a clown was like throwing gasoline on a fire. For a few precious seconds, John couldn't focus on anything but the weapons and the fact that he shouldn't really be fixated on something he wanted so badly, but it was better than focusing on the clown because that was a vision he really didn't want to see.

"He's telling the truth!" McKay's voice cut through the fog in John's brain. "We've never met!"

John craned his head around toward the voice. With that small movement, John discovered he was strapped onto a table so tightly that he couldn't move anything but his head. And he tried to move, but the leathery ropes held him securely to the surface. Wraith tendrils growing out of the raised platform encased his arms and legs. Even his temples had Wraith connections attached that hindered movement. The connections led to a console with a streaming Wraith display behind him. Next to the console, another Wraith clown held McKay, whose tormented eyes met his briefly and then darted to a space just beyond the fireman clown with an almost imperceptible nod.

Sheppard followed McKay's gaze and he stopped struggling as he took in the scene. A red striped clown held two women on their knees just inside the door. Beside them lay a shriveled victim, a mummified carcass with eyes sunken and mouth wide open in a frozen, agonized scream. The two girls held hands for comfort and their anguished eyes kept returning to the shriveled body lying next to them. They both cried quietly, wishing to avoid attention, but neither seemed the type that was used to blending in. They didn't come from the victims the Wraith had cocooned earlier — he would have noticed. Where one was flawless, tall and strikingly blond in expensive retro jeans, the other was cute, petite and strikingly redheaded with a colorful taste in fashion. The two were clearly opposites and stunningly attractive.

Finally, the frightened blue eyes of the pretty blond met his in utter horror and shock. He recognized the look. She was questioning reality.

John renewed his struggle against the leathery bonds and the clown turned its creepy blue eyes toward him again, but directed his questions to the officer. "Don't lie to me. You were found skulking about like these others! Who are you? Who is the one that modified my ship?"

"Please! I-I-I never saw them before in my life!" The man cast about the strange room in confusion. "I don't know who they are! I don't know who those women are! I don't even know who you are!"

Even on his knees, John could see the officer was over six foot tall, now in his mid-forties, and his brown hair had been due for a trim two months ago. His build was thick and athletic with muscles rounding out his shoulders and chest. Despite the feeding wound, the man looked solid and his face bore the scars of man that didn't mind wading into a fight. He had a square face with a wide brow and a square jaw, but his nose sat at a slightly crooked angle, flattened against his face. It was a face that looked like it belonged to someone who had poked his nose into the wrong place before.

"Who modified my ship?!" The Wraith raised his feeding hand with a growl.

"Stop! He doesn't know anything!" McKay blurted out.

John clenched his teeth to force normalcy into his voice and attract the Clown's attention. "Leave him alone. He's telling the truth. He doesn't know us." And the clown — no it was a Wraith — looked at him.

"Yes," the Wraith smiled with a flash of pointy fangs, sensing an advantage as it examined Sheppard. "He still doesn't understand," it looked at its feeding hand, "but you do." It focused on John in delight. "I sense … fear."

"It's not you," Sheppard immediately denied, "it's the costume."

"Sheppard!" McKay sounded worried.

But he'd gained the clown's full attention and the Wraith left the other man swaying on his knees to lean over John and measure him with an intensity through the blue contacts that sent a chill traveling up John's spine. "I doubt you would find tranquility in my true appearance," the clown purred and its white painted face delicately sniffed the air with anticipation as its hand drifted closer.

John's sneer came off as a sickly smile. "You didn't have to get all dressed up just for me." But he recoiled from the threatening palm and redoubled his efforts to loosen the gristly bindings that covered his arms and legs.

"I find a foolish amount of trust is gained through your visual language. Trust of uniforms, firemen, soldiers, nurses," the Wraith smiled as its black claw popped John's top snap open, "even clowns."

"Leave him alone!" John heard McKay struggle behind him.

"McKay!" John warned and the scuffling quieted.

He felt the blood pounding in his temples as the second snap popped loose along with John's composure. "God damn it, you're only a _Wraith_." He gritted his teeth, dreading what was coming, and watched the orange-haired fireman lean closer as he tried to convince himself that it wasn't really a clown, that he wasn't about to lose his life by the hand of his worst nightmare, a _clown_.

"Yes, I am Wraith," it hissed looking a bit surprised, "and you are most … informed." The painted brow furrowed as it looked from John to McKay and then to the women. Its gaze returned to the streaming monitor above John's head and stayed there. "Yes, you are most rare, the likes I've not encountered for thousands of years. Ah, you are not surprised by my longevity. It is as I thought," the clown's creepy blue eyes returned to John. "You know the Wraith _intimately_," it confirmed.

John's lip curled slightly at the phrasing.

"And you … You have managed to do something that has not been done for thousands of years. You managed to kill a brethren with nothing more than a simple tool."

"Thanks for the confirmation," John mocked and tried not to dwell on how the clown planned to even the score.

"Oh, he's is not dead _now_,"The Wraith clown amended sweetly. It's meaning was unmistakable as it looked toward the door at the most recent victim.

John clamped down on the surge of anger and turned his head away, feeling his heart slamming like a sledge hammer in his chest. His eye fell on the cop. The table of weapons loomed over the man, close enough to snatch and grab, but the man reeled on his knees, his elbows loosely bound to his middle with the shirt, his face blank of initiative and reeling with exhaustion.

"I smell," The Wraith towered over him and delicately pulled John's cotton shirt aside with the tip of a claw, "_fear_."

John flinched.

"Right now, the lingering effect of the stun is protecting you, but soon, you will feel intense pain — the pain of feeding." The Wraith examined the streaming information above John's head and smiled with false dismay. "Ah, I fear terror has hastened your recovery."

John clenched his jaw as the Wraith hissed and its mouth curled in a hideous snarling smile. It held up its hand and turned its attention to McKay. "If you do not tell me what I want to know," its fake blue eyes swept back to John, "I will take your life from you again and again until you wish for the cold hand of Death. Now who tampered with my vessel?" it demanded.

•

TBC

(Leave me bread crumbs if you enjoyed the ride!)


End file.
